Degrees: PHD, 1977, Brown Univ; BA, 1968, Dartmouth Coll

Bio:

After graduation from Dartmouth College (1968), where he majored in English, G. Thomas Couser taught and coached for several years at Kimball Union Academy in Meriden, NH. In 1977 he received his Ph.D. in American Civilization at Brown University. After teaching English and American Studies at Connecticut College, he came to Hofstra in 1982. In addition to being a professor of English, he has served as Director of American Studies and Director of Disability Studies, a program he initiated in 2003.

His primary teaching interests are in American literature (especially Native American literature), life writing (autobiography, memoir and so on), and disability studies. He has been awarded three Fellowships by the National Endowment for the Humanities, and he is the author of American Autobiography: The Prophetic Mode (Massachusetts, 1979), Altered Egos: Authority in American Autobiography (Oxford, 1989), Recovering Bodies: Illness, Disability, and Life Writing (Wisconsin, 1997), Vulnerable Subjects: Ethics and Life Writing (Cornell, 2004), and Signifying Bodies: Disability and Contemporary Life Writing (Michigan, 2009), as well as about fifty articles or book chapters. His work has been assigned at universities in Canada, the United Kingdom, Spain, France, Italy, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Australia, and South Africa, as well as the United States.